Honkai Star Rail
I am still going through the 1.0 through 2.5 events and sidestorylines before jumping to Amphoreus.
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First, the events. I am finding that early HSR events are low energy and somewhat boring. They usually revolve around some sort of management sim, be it you running a museum and expanding the sections and hiring people, or building your apartment on the Astral Express one room at a time, or pathing shipping routes from the businesses in Aurum Alley to the shipping dock, or following up on rumors of paranormal activity to boost fake twitter followers, training March 7th to become a master swordsman, or mixing drinks at a bar in Penacony, etc. The common denominator in all of these management sim minigames is that you cannot possibly lose/fail the deadline/go bankrupt. You can't lose revenue or miss deadlines. Line can only go up and the time does not advance until you get it right. So once you do the minigame enough times, it starts to feel like you are going through the motions.
And ofcourse, you have the usual issue with HSR's storytelling where it is long and low energy. There is not a lot of tension to make me want to turn the page and find out what happens next. So I find myself alt+tabbing out to refresh my internet tabs a lot.
Fortunately the content gets better as the time goes on. I have good things to say about the more recent events.
The Belobog museum restoration event is underwhelming. You would think you would get to see some glimpses of the planet's past, or get to look at interesting artifacts of prior eras or get some flavor on current stuff like their mechas or their weapons. But we get pretty much nothing here and it feels like a timewaster.
Penacony bartending event
I thought that the premise of mixing drinks for monsters was neat. I thought that the game engine blending between the different colors and textures was neat, and some of the later drinks took some puzzling out trying to balance the different ingredients to meat the conditions. Unfortunately the actual plot is once again 2 to 3 hours long but very low energy and not that engaging. It is interesting that you are called a "drinksmith" instead of a bartender, and I don't think they ever say that the drinks are alcoholic. Makes me wonder if Mihoyo is trying to avoid some random country maybe going after them or something if just straight up say it's a bar.
Next, we have this combination multi-event/multi-sidestoryline arc going on in Xianzhou. It is the Aurum Alley event > Ghost event > Wardance sidestoryline part 1 > Wardance event > Wardance sidestoryline part 2.
Aurum Alley
This event adds a newr residential city district area to the worldship of Xianzhou Luofu. The event is about how this place was once a trade hub but has fallen into decline and now you are coming in trying to revitalize the businesses here and draw in tourism. Once again it's a management sim where you cannot fail, line can only go up. You alternate between a minigame where you path shipping routes from businesses to the airship dock, and a minigame where you stack goods onto pallets for the airships to take away. Good in theorey but the lack of tension in both the long story and in the gameplay makes for a boring experience.
This area also has a brand new battle scene/background taking place in a nice market street at night. Unfortunately you only see this for two or three battles, which is a waste. Would be nice if was used for the repeatable endgame fights like Simulated Universe, Memory of Chaos, Pulp Fiction, etc.
Ghost event
The event starts off better than average. Like the prior event, it also adds a brand new area to the Xianzhou Luofu, where the Ten Lords Commission judges seals away demons. A new character named Huohuo is introduced. We get some cool lore about how demons in the HSR world - called Heliobus - are actually fragments that broke off from stars. When Huohuo was a little kid, she found a falling star and it possessed her tail, got sealed into it, and has now become her buddy cop. Mr. Tail's voice acting by Takeshi Hirabayashi is pretty entertaining. I was initially surprised when he sacrificed himself to blow up the demon villain. Wow. Somebody actually died!
It does however feel a little cliche for Huohuo to have a sob arc about how she was disowned by her parents and bullied by the other kids for having a fiery tail. Just feels rather stereotypical how a LOT of gacha characters coming off of an assembly line every few weeks has a sob backstory. Ofcourse, everyone in their life has underwent sad things, but it just feels like in RPGs/fantasy and especially this brand of JRPGs/anime/gachas that it gets emphasized as the defining things of characters too often IMO. We get some illusory alternate reality of a world where Huohuo's tail possessed by a fragment of a star makes her more popular, which IMO is what should have been the canon.
I wonder if I should feel sorry for whoever poor sob marries Huohuo when she grows up. Mr. Tail is going to be there and commentating on the play by play. The fanfics write themselves.
Then you reach the second half of the event, which your usual low energy HSR management sim stuff. (This is then when I immediately realized "oh. Mr. Tail is gonna come back at the end, isn't he?). You go around catching a dozen or two dozen or so Heliobuses in episodic arcs, almost all of which were boring. The only ones that stood out to me was the one where Yanqing willfully studies under a Heliobus and gets off scot free, uninjured and unpunished. I thought that was pretty egregious. Talked about that one in my last writeup. And then arc where the lazy Qingque gets possessed by a demon and begins fantasizing about being a galactic fortune 500 CEO selling board games across the cosmos. That was entertaining.
Oh, the quest where you go to seal away a demon, only to find out that the demon is in a romance with a guy and he knew she was actually a demon consuming his lifeforce but was fine with it anyway and tells you to go away, and then he actually dies due to being in proximity with his affection. That was interesting.
The event also has a navigational minigame where you program a robot to go forward until it hits something, and you are trying to make it reach a destination. That was neat.
It's a good thing that this took place inside a space folding delve/pocket dimension, otherwise Jing Yuan would have wrecked the ship while transforming into a colossus just to mess with this demon possessed kid. I don't know if Castorice's and Phainon's territory mechanics are canonical like Reality Marbles from Fate, as that would be the only way you could have such immense devastation happening without literally wrecking the surrounding environments.
I have also been doing the sidestorylines, namely the Trailblaze Continuance missions, which basically continue the story of a planet after you leave it in the main story. Overall, I have found these stories to be a lot better than any of the three main storyline arcs I have played through thus far (1.0 Jarlio and Xianzhou, and then the 2.X Penacony main story). Whereas the main stories meander for many hours with little to no tension, these sidestorylines are about 1 to 2 hours long but have tension right out the gate with a clear villain you need to stop and a threat of failure. High tension right off the bat. For the Jarlio one, I thought that the IPC officer in the mech suit barking orders and smashing up the mining camp and his voice acting made him pretty loathsome and made me motivated to cave in his armor.
I do find it irksome that the game tries to pretend that Topaz is actually still a cool character we are supposed to like when she just attempted a planet takeover and casually sicced killer mechs onto the militia.
And ofcourse, you have the usual issue with HSR's storytelling where it is long and low energy. There is not a lot of tension to make me want to turn the page and find out what happens next. So I find myself alt+tabbing out to refresh my internet tabs a lot.
Fortunately the content gets better as the time goes on. I have good things to say about the more recent events.
The Belobog museum restoration event is underwhelming. You would think you would get to see some glimpses of the planet's past, or get to look at interesting artifacts of prior eras or get some flavor on current stuff like their mechas or their weapons. But we get pretty much nothing here and it feels like a timewaster.
Penacony bartending event
I thought that the premise of mixing drinks for monsters was neat. I thought that the game engine blending between the different colors and textures was neat, and some of the later drinks took some puzzling out trying to balance the different ingredients to meat the conditions. Unfortunately the actual plot is once again 2 to 3 hours long but very low energy and not that engaging. It is interesting that you are called a "drinksmith" instead of a bartender, and I don't think they ever say that the drinks are alcoholic. Makes me wonder if Mihoyo is trying to avoid some random country maybe going after them or something if just straight up say it's a bar.
Next, we have this combination multi-event/multi-sidestoryline arc going on in Xianzhou. It is the Aurum Alley event > Ghost event > Wardance sidestoryline part 1 > Wardance event > Wardance sidestoryline part 2.
Aurum Alley
This event adds a newr residential city district area to the worldship of Xianzhou Luofu. The event is about how this place was once a trade hub but has fallen into decline and now you are coming in trying to revitalize the businesses here and draw in tourism. Once again it's a management sim where you cannot fail, line can only go up. You alternate between a minigame where you path shipping routes from businesses to the airship dock, and a minigame where you stack goods onto pallets for the airships to take away. Good in theorey but the lack of tension in both the long story and in the gameplay makes for a boring experience.
This area also has a brand new battle scene/background taking place in a nice market street at night. Unfortunately you only see this for two or three battles, which is a waste. Would be nice if was used for the repeatable endgame fights like Simulated Universe, Memory of Chaos, Pulp Fiction, etc.
Ghost event
The event starts off better than average. Like the prior event, it also adds a brand new area to the Xianzhou Luofu, where the Ten Lords Commission judges seals away demons. A new character named Huohuo is introduced. We get some cool lore about how demons in the HSR world - called Heliobus - are actually fragments that broke off from stars. When Huohuo was a little kid, she found a falling star and it possessed her tail, got sealed into it, and has now become her buddy cop. Mr. Tail's voice acting by Takeshi Hirabayashi is pretty entertaining. I was initially surprised when he sacrificed himself to blow up the demon villain. Wow. Somebody actually died!
It does however feel a little cliche for Huohuo to have a sob arc about how she was disowned by her parents and bullied by the other kids for having a fiery tail. Just feels rather stereotypical how a LOT of gacha characters coming off of an assembly line every few weeks has a sob backstory. Ofcourse, everyone in their life has underwent sad things, but it just feels like in RPGs/fantasy and especially this brand of JRPGs/anime/gachas that it gets emphasized as the defining things of characters too often IMO. We get some illusory alternate reality of a world where Huohuo's tail possessed by a fragment of a star makes her more popular, which IMO is what should have been the canon.
I wonder if I should feel sorry for whoever poor sob marries Huohuo when she grows up. Mr. Tail is going to be there and commentating on the play by play. The fanfics write themselves.
Then you reach the second half of the event, which your usual low energy HSR management sim stuff. (This is then when I immediately realized "oh. Mr. Tail is gonna come back at the end, isn't he?). You go around catching a dozen or two dozen or so Heliobuses in episodic arcs, almost all of which were boring. The only ones that stood out to me was the one where Yanqing willfully studies under a Heliobus and gets off scot free, uninjured and unpunished. I thought that was pretty egregious. Talked about that one in my last writeup. And then arc where the lazy Qingque gets possessed by a demon and begins fantasizing about being a galactic fortune 500 CEO selling board games across the cosmos. That was entertaining.
Oh, the quest where you go to seal away a demon, only to find out that the demon is in a romance with a guy and he knew she was actually a demon consuming his lifeforce but was fine with it anyway and tells you to go away, and then he actually dies due to being in proximity with his affection. That was interesting.
The event also has a navigational minigame where you program a robot to go forward until it hits something, and you are trying to make it reach a destination. That was neat.
It's a good thing that this took place inside a space folding delve/pocket dimension, otherwise Jing Yuan would have wrecked the ship while transforming into a colossus just to mess with this demon possessed kid. I don't know if Castorice's and Phainon's territory mechanics are canonical like Reality Marbles from Fate, as that would be the only way you could have such immense devastation happening without literally wrecking the surrounding environments.
I have also been doing the sidestorylines, namely the Trailblaze Continuance missions, which basically continue the story of a planet after you leave it in the main story. Overall, I have found these stories to be a lot better than any of the three main storyline arcs I have played through thus far (1.0 Jarlio and Xianzhou, and then the 2.X Penacony main story). Whereas the main stories meander for many hours with little to no tension, these sidestorylines are about 1 to 2 hours long but have tension right out the gate with a clear villain you need to stop and a threat of failure. High tension right off the bat. For the Jarlio one, I thought that the IPC officer in the mech suit barking orders and smashing up the mining camp and his voice acting made him pretty loathsome and made me motivated to cave in his armor.
I do find it irksome that the game tries to pretend that Topaz is actually still a cool character we are supposed to like when she just attempted a planet takeover and casually sicced killer mechs onto the militia.
**** this game! I torrented the original Ultimate Alliance 2006 release, installed it in 5 minutes and didn't have a single crash or bug in like 40 hours of playtime. Like, ****, ******, games used to be plug-and-play without any hustle or bustle.
If his plan was to cause maximum calamity and/or to pass on the Plaguemark to Fei Xiao, then why didn't he do this in the first place?
